Insecure Future

So I have just discovered that my father has been made redundant by his company. This is not as bad news as it sounds, since he was planning on retiring from the private sector next year anyway (and panning on going to the ultra-private sector of contractor work if he decides he needs some extra spending money) and his redundancy package pretty much covers what he was looking at earning from them as it was. This sort makes it all 'equal out' in the grander scheme of things, but...

I can't quite shake a niggling feeling of worry. My dad will essentially be retired. He has consistantly been the source of all income in this family and I've relied on him financially beyond all reasonable expectation for my entire life. So now he's retiring and that big security blanket is kind of receding. It may be a late revelation (and one I kinda knew already) but I really am going to have to fend for myself pretty soon. If not right now. The problem is a simple one:

Not sure that I can.

I've got very little work drive when it comes to the actual world of shitty day-to-day employment, I've got unrealistic expectations about my lifestyle and I have absolutely no idea how I'm ever, ever going to pay him back for any of the money he's probably going to be relying on in the future.

This world, basically, is a completley non-fun one when you get down to it. We go to work (which with this recession is becoming less and less likely with every passing day), we probably hate what we do, we come home, pretend to be something else on the internet and then we get ready to do it all again.

What's the fucking point?

Why do we live like this?

We don't really have any other choice. There's no revolution, there's no other way for us. Any other country in the world is pretty much just as rubbish, only with a higher percentage of being murdered (I promise, no jokes about the Cumbria Shootings, no matter how tempting they might be). But then there's all the 'you can do whatever you want to do' and 'be positive' talking going on, we apparantly have to look at the bright side of things in this increasinly rubbish brown/grey world we live in. Thing is, all the things that I'd actually want to do? Pretty inaccessible, since most other people I know want to do them as well. How many jobs for television writers are there, and just how many hundreds of thousands of people want to fill them? What are my chances? That doesn't mean I shouldn't go for it, which I will endevour to do... but it does mean I have to look at the realism of it all and consider what I'm actually going to do with myself while waiting for that miraculous call from the BBC.

Barwork?

Teaching?

I don't know. It's a scary realisation, but the WORLD IS CRAP. And we have to live there. I just wish it were slightly less crap, but then if wishes were horses then we'd all be eating steak (to quote Firefly).

All in all... we just need to find something that we can do, something that'll pay the bills and something that we can use to distract ourselves from the grey monotomy that we are forced to live in. Go us.

Anyway:

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET.

I went into this movie hoping that with the recent wave of horror remakes (most of which I haven't seen, but some of which actually peaked my interest), this film would be halfway decent. Friday 13th was decent, it was fun and not all that demanding, but probably could have been better. Last House on the Left was my Film Of The Year 2009 before District 9 showed up and pointed out it was the best film ever.

But lo, the magic didn't strike again. This was a pretty bland film in my admittedly not-all-that-geared-up-for-horror opinion. I found the characters to be pretty uninteresting, the setting to be under developed and the main thing that's supposed to make horror films interesting (suspense) to be kinda pissed away pretty early on in the narrative.

As Mark Blake taught us (overly handsome, funny and intelligent man that he is), showing us the bad guy makes him less scary. In this film, you get to see ol' Freddy Kreugar (more on him in a sec) within the first sequence of the movie. Kinda early, if you ask me, a lot could have been done to postpone his entrance or coneal his face or anything... just to make it look like the director knew what he was doing. Which he didn't.

However... Freddy.

Freddy in this film is depicted by Jackie Earle Hayley, who might actually BE the best thing since sliced bread. This man of very odd appearence is a bottomless pit of talent, he reeks of anything he wants to, be it fear, awe, sickening hatred or spooky innocence. He is the single best thing about this movie and I cannot believe that the writers and director let him down as badly as they did by giving him this utterly bland platform from which to establish himself as the new face of one of horror's defining villians.

Even though it's a remake, this film feels like it's shamelessly ripping off the original (which just feels odd to watch). I quite liked the first outing of Freddy, way back when Dave got me to watch it one night, huddled on a sofe with a sleeping bag many, many years ago. So to see some of the classic set pieces (the claw in the bath, the bodybag being dragged by nobody...) get used again kinda feels like it's cheapening them.

All in all, this film didn't have anything going for it apart from the awesomeness that is J.E.H. (the power of three first names is with him).

Next: FOUR LIONS